PADAWAN: The community should be able to differentiate between cyber-crimes and burglary as the two are separate cases involving different breeds of suspect.
Sarawak Police Commissioner Datuk Mohd Azman Ahmad Sapri explained that these two crimes are not the same because for burglary cases, the police know that the suspect would still be around the area of the scene.
“As for cyber-crime cases, where the suspects commit these online scam activities, they are not even here (in Sarawak).
“They could be scamming from abroad because it happens in the cyberspace through social media,” he said when officiating at the closing ceremony of the Community Policing with Taman Malihah folk at Taman Malihah multipurpose hall today.
In this regard, he reminded the community not to be easily fooled by providing their bank account information, transaction authorisation code (TAC) and personal details to strangers, who in turn will transfer money from the victims’ accounts into the suspects’ accounts.
Therefore, Azman advised that nothing comes for free especially when it involves messages claiming that ‘You won a prize!’, which can often be seen happening on the Internet or through messages.
“We don’t even get ourselves involved in such activity and don’t entertain such things.
“It is like receiving messages or phone calls with the alleged message – ‘Congratulations! You have won the Tongkat Ali competition!’. But in reality, you don’t even drink or buy the Tongkat Ali product.
“As I said, nothing comes for free and it is not possible if you can win a prize and not participate in the competition,” he said.
He pointed out that that these cyber-criminals are targeting about 1,000 mobile phone users per day and if they managed to get 10 victims, that is more than enough for them.
In addition, he also urged the public to share the information learnt from the programme and give advice to neighbours, friends, family and others regarding cyber-crimes.
On the Community Policing programme, various activities were held such as talks on various crimes and cyber-crimes, which is an effort by Sarawak police to provide awareness to the community to jointly prevent crime from happening.
Also present were Sarawak Deputy Police Commissioner Datuk Mancha Ata, Sarawak Criminal Investigation Department chief SAC Lukas Aket, Sarawak Crime Prevention and Community Safety Department chief SAC Wong Ing Fung, Sarawak Commercial Crime Investigation Department chief Supt Maria Rasid and Padawan OCPD Supt Abang Zainal Abidin Abang Ahmad.
